Arthur Nersesian
Arthur Nersesian is the author of eight novels, including The Fuck-Up (Akashic, 1997 & MTV Books/Simon & Schuster, 1999), Chinese Takeout (HarperCollins), Manhattan Loverboy (Akashic), Suicide Casanova (Akashic), dogrun (MTV Books/Simon & Schuster), and Unlubricated (HarperCollins). He is also the author of East Village Tetralogy, a collection of four plays. He lives in New York City.
From arthurnersesian.com:
www.arthurnersesian.com/
"Arthur Nersesian is a real New York writer. His novels are a celebration
of marginal characters living in the East Village and trying to survive.
Nersesian's books include The Fuck-Up, The East Village Tetralogy, and now just published by a small press based in New York, Manhattan Loverboy. Nersesian has been a fixture in the writing scene for many years. He was an editor for The Portable Lower East Side, which was an important magazine during the 1980s and early 90s.
When The Fuck-Up came out in 1997, MTV Books picked it up and reprinted it in a new edition for hipsters everywhere. Soon Nersesian was no longer known only to a cabal of young bohemians on Avenue A. His work has been championed by The Village Voice and Time Out."
“Nowadays the standards had plummeted so far that I failed even at being a failure. I silently packed up. Nothing else was left. They had even robbed me of self-pity”
“Some of the more industrious ones were washing the windshields of cars that had been trapped by the red light. I used to see them from inside cars and think they brought it on themselves, and they probably did but now it didn't make a difference. I went over to the fire and warmed my hands with the group. I looked at their faces: idiots, criminals, retards, schizophrenics, paranoids, rejects, fuck-ups, broken-down failures. Alone, once children, never asked to be put on this earth, they ended up as jurors. Their lives were the verdict: the system, the man, something had failed.”
“Stressful jobs, loveless marriages, bad food-most people kill themselves slowly every day.”
“As the components of your life are stripped away, after all the ambitions and hopes vaporize, you reach a self-reflective starkness-- the repetitious plucking of a single overwound string.”
“The masses-I love em-they rush for red lights, risking everything to capture a few seconds, only to get home and waste their lives.”
“Finally life becomes a very specific thing--and that's what we are. Ultimately, looking back, I'm beginning to believe that we need to always be fucked up. We need to always have some reason to hate ourselves, something to make us feel eternally incomplete.”